BermudAir has confirmed plans to lease an Embraer E190F freighter from Regional One, becoming the first operator of Embraer’s E Freighter programme in the Americas and only the second operator anywhere in the world.
The move pushes the Bermuda based carrier beyond scheduled passenger flying and into dedicated cargo operations for the first time in its history.
It also revives an Embraer freighter programme that spent the best part of a year grounded and without a customer.
This piece looks at the cargo statistics behind the Caribbean and North Atlantic markets the aircraft will serve, and asks whether the E190F genuinely adds up for an airline of BermudAir’s size.
What BermudAir Is Actually Adding
BermudAir currently operates two Embraer E175s and two Embraer E190s across 10 destinations spanning the Caribbean, the United States and Canada.
The E190F will sit alongside that passenger fleet as a dedicated freighter, leased from lessor Regional One rather than purchased outright.
Embraer built the aircraft to carry up to 13.5 tonnes across more than 100 cubic metres of main deck and lower deck volume, loading up to nine pallets and containers at once.
Fully loaded, the aircraft has a cargo range of roughly 2,590 nautical miles, comfortably enough to link Bermuda with the Caribbean and the eastern seaboard of North America on a single sector.
Embraer positions the type between large cargo turboprops and conventional narrowbody freighters, claiming 40 per cent more volume and three times the range of a turboprop, alongside operating costs some 30 per cent below larger narrowbody freighters.
A Programme That Needed A Customer
The E190F has a harder history than the press release lets on.
Embraer launched the E Freighter programme around 2022 to target e-commerce driven cargo demand, lining up lessors NAC and Regional One alongside Chinese partner Lanzhou Aviation Industry Development Group.
Kenyan operator Astral Aviation was originally positioned as launch customer for two leased E190Fs, then withdrew in October 2023, saying the lease economics no longer matched its network.
The first completed E190F flew in April 2024 and gained certification across Brazil, the United States and Europe by the end of that year, then sat grounded in Brazil from January 2025 until BermudAir stepped in.
Regional One now holds five firm E190F orders and has taken delivery of two converted aircraft, and BermudAir is set to fly the type’s first commercial cargo service anywhere in the world.
Cargo Demand Across BermudAir’s Network
The wider numbers are encouraging without being spectacular.
IATA reported global air cargo demand growth of 3.4 per cent across 2025, and director general Willie Walsh pointed to e-commerce as the main driver of that volume even as tariff disputes reshaped established trade lanes.
Closer to BermudAir’s own network, the picture softens. Latin America and the Caribbean grew cargo demand by 2.3 per cent across 2025, while capacity in the same region expanded by 4.5 per cent, meaning supply grew faster than demand.
North America performed worse again, with cargo volumes falling 1.3 per cent over the year.
By May 2026, regional cargo volumes reached 343,966 metric tonnes, up 3.3 per cent year on year, though most of that growth sits in South American markets such as Brazil, Colombia and Peru rather than the smaller Caribbean islands BermudAir actually serves.
Bermuda’s own trade figures explain why cargo appeals to BermudAir at all.
The island imported just 47.4 million dollars of goods from the United States in 2025 against exports of 570.7 million dollars the other way, a lopsided balance that underlines how dependent Bermuda is on inbound freight for everyday goods and how thin the return cargo base is likely to remain for some time.
Where The E190F Sits Against The Competition
Amerijet International already dominates cargo flying between Florida and the Caribbean, running around 25 freighters built around Boeing 767 and 757 jets out of Miami.
Those aircraft carry far more freight per rotation than the E190F ever will, and Amerijet has spent years building the ground handling and customs relationships that come with that scale.
The E190F was never built to compete on those terms.
Its appeal lies in matching cargo capacity to the smaller, thinner routes BermudAir already flies profitably as a passenger carrier, reaching island airports that struggle to support widebody freighters and offering scheduled frequency that bulk carriers rarely bother with on secondary Caribbean routes.
At the other end of the market sit the small turboprop feeder operators that already move freight between the outer islands, often flying elderly aircraft with limited range and modest payloads.
Embraer’s own comparison against large cargo turboprops, claiming roughly 40 per cent more volume and three times the range, is really an argument aimed at this end of the market rather than at Amerijet.
If BermudAir can pull express freight away from that slower, feeder style capacity while still connecting through to its own passenger network, the E190F earns its keep by sitting in a gap that neither the big freighter operators nor the small turboprop carriers currently fill well.
Is It Worth It For BermudAir?
The E190F gives BermudAir a freighter sized correctly for its network, rather than one chosen simply because a lessor had it available.
Leasing rather than buying limits the financial exposure that helped sink Astral Aviation’s involvement in the same programme, and BermudAir already operates the E190 platform, so pilot and maintenance crossover with the passenger fleet should help keep the freighter’s running costs under control.
The regional cargo numbers are not dramatic. Caribbean demand growth trails the bigger Latin American economies, and capacity across the wider region is already outpacing demand. BermudAir is not, however, chasing that regional total.
It is targeting a narrow, defensible niche of scheduled freight between Bermuda, the Caribbean and North America on routes it already understands better than any competitor operating there.
Read on those narrower terms, the E190F looks like a sensible, comparatively low risk way for BermudAir to build a second revenue line, rather than a speculative bet on an aircraft programme that has struggled to find a home.
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